


I Tried to Get to you But you Came to me Instead

by RisingShadows



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Multi, Original Female Character is William Schofield's Wife, Reincarnation, Somewhat OT4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23523004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisingShadows/pseuds/RisingShadows
Summary: Tom Blake dies in his arms, William Schofield dies on the battlefield.They get a second chance.
Relationships: Lauri/Original Female Character, Tom Blake/William Schofield, William Schofield/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63
Collections: 2nd devons writing challenges





	I Tried to Get to you But you Came to me Instead

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Belly of the Deepest Love by the Tow'rs!

"We have so much to say, and we shall never say it."

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On the Western Front.

William Schofield dies.

He dies as he always knew he would. He dies with the memory of another mans blood on his hands. He dies with his rifle clutched in one hand and the hand of a private already dead in the other. 

The hand of a boy who had not deserved to die here, cut down like so many others. He had held him as well as he could while he died. Had listened to his last requests and known he wouldn’t live long enough to fulfill them. His own blood dripping into the mud beneath him, the private’s head resting against his shoulder while he held the boy.

He closes his eyes with one last look at his wife, his daughters. He breathes one last prayer to a God he’d stopped believing in on that first bloody night at the Somme. The first time he’d watched men fall and die and bleed around him. 

He closes his eyes with one last thought of another boy that died in his arms, of a woman he loved and left behind. Of a desperate girl and a babe she’d give so much to save. 

William Schofield dreams of dying, forgotten, on a distant battlefield. William Schofield is ten and his dreams revolve around a boy with dark hair and a kind smile, a woman with a fiery grin and their two giggling girls. William Schofield is ten and he dreams about the boy almost constantly. About the woman and her soft hands and gentle touch. About the girls, their hands safe, secure in his own. William Schofield is ten and he dreams of a girl in the ruins of what may have once been her home. 

William Schofield is ten and he dreams of death, and war, and overwhelming grief.

Occasionally he dreams of a plane. Of fire surrounding him. Of a girl, and a baby. A French town in ruins around him and the separate overwhelming need to find a woods, the 2nd Devons. A man by the name of Joseph, a little older than the boy in his dreams. 

Joseph is important even though Will can never remember quite why when he wakes up. Just like he never remembers the boys name. Just like he can never quite picture the woman’s face, with her fiery smile and beautiful eyes. Can never quite remember the girl’s words. 

The one thing he always remembers is cherry blossoms. Is water dragging him down, clinging to his skin, his clothes. A burning pain in his lungs and cherry blossoms drifting over head. The boy smiling surrounded by them, an orchard of dead trees. A farmhouse and blood on his hands. 

There was always blood on his hands. 

By the time he is fifteen he knows not to mention his dreams. He should’ve known before he was ten. When his mother waved them off with a sigh and blamed them on too many tall tales and too active and imagination. 

Will remembers more than just his dreams. He remembers the grief like an old friend, like a second shadow that pulls at his bones. He remembers the fear just as well. The mind numbing knowledge that no one was safe in the trenches.

He grows up searching for two faces, then three. He grows up searching for so many nameless memories. And then one day he finds one. 

He is 17, alone with his grandmother for the summer. He is 17 and he dreams of the girl hiding in the ruins of what had once been her home and the babe she was protecting for a week straight. He dreams of scared eyes, of desperate broken French. Of gentle hands on the back of his head, soothing an aching pain he never quite remembered.

He begs his grandmother to teach him by the second night and tries to learn all he can through the next week. She humors him. Teaches him for an hour every morning and every night and listens to him whisper what words he remembers when she offers to translate. 

He never tells her where he heard it, or why he needs to know what it means. She does what his mother never could and doesn’t ask. Instead she goes into town one day and returns with a small stack of books. Les Fleurs du Mal on the top of the stack and a small pile of TinTin comics just beneath it.

It was on the third week that his grandmother had dragged him into the town, away from the books he’d been pouring over for the last week. It was on a Sunday that he rounded a corner in his grandmothers town and ran into a girl a year or so younger than him. 

This time there was no babe in her arms, this time she was not hiding alone in a deserted town. This time she blinked once, slowly at him. Her hand froze half way to his face.

Two hours later and she was correcting his pronunciation as they wandered through the town. Two hours later and he knew her name was Lauri and she had dreamed of a baby her entire life. Had dreamed of a soldier with his eyes, of a town on fire, of her desperate fear whenever the baby had so much as giggled that they would be found. 

Of stumbling to safety the baby in her arms, of sleeping for hours on end while people murmured in a language not her own. 

She told him in whispers of dying. Alone, just another life lost to a war that slaughtered so many. Voiceless among the thousands that died before her and the thousands that doubtlessly died after. 

By the time his grandmother found them it was getting dark. The two of them sitting alone as they talked and the sun dipped behind the buildings around them. 

His grandmother had dragged the both of them home for dinner. Lauri unable to decline when she’d turned sharp eyes and a kind smile on her. By the end of the week Lauri was teaching Will French in return for lessons on English. 

By the end of the month the two were close friends. By the time he was nineteen they were practically each other’s only friends. The two sharing an apartment near Will’s university to avoid their own families discomfort with allowing them away. 

Sometimes they woke to the other stumbling through the apartment. Sometimes Lauri pulled him away from the sink while he whispered about blood on his hands. Sometimes he caught her by the arm while she searched, desperate to find the child she was protecting. 

Sometimes they slept on the small couch in the center of the apartment, wrapped around each other to stave off the memories they knew they’d see when they closed their eyes. 

He told her of the woman with the fiery smile and sharp wit. Of the boy with beautiful blue eyes and a kind smile. Of two little girls laughing while they clutched at his hands. Of a girl hidden in the ruins of a town, desperate to protect the small life she held in her arms. 

Lauri told him about a girl she had loved and lost when the soldiers had swept through her town. Of the babe she had found and taken to save if she could. Of soldiers from both sides who had hidden just as she had in the ruins of what had been her home. 

Of a soldier with blue eyes and a canteen full of milk. 

He is 19 when Lauri guides him through breathing after he wakes from another dream of a river. Of water in his lungs as he sinks beneath the surface. Of cherry blossoms floating around his head. He is 19 when he dreams of the woman with a sharp wit and beautiful green eyes for nearly two weeks. 

Technically he didn’t find her. She found him, a gentle hand on his shoulder pulling him around to meet green eyes. She had introduced herself as Elizabeth a minute later and he had wondered how he had ever forgotten her name to begin with. 

He called her El and her and Lauri got along like a house on fire. She didn’t remember quite as much as he did, didn’t have the memories of the war or dying. She remembered the quiet loss of knowing that your lover was at war and the grief that followed. The pain of knowing that one you loved would never return to you. 

That you could never tell them all you wished you had had the time to say before. 

She told him of a man that she dreamed of, a soldier who came to tell her. Who honored her husbands sacrifice just as he had honored another’s. Of being another voice in the wind, forgotten in the scale of all that was lost and destroyed when she had lost something so precious to her. 

She told him of two girls who looked like him to the point it hurt. Of watching them grow without him by her side. For a time it’s enough. The dreams drifting away while the three of them grew closer. 

And then it isn’t anymore. He’s 22 and his dreams are filled with a boy dying in his arms. With blood welling between his fingers, his voice rough as he promises him. He’ll write, he’ll find his brother, he’ll save them. 

He dreams of beautiful blue eyes, of the boy standing among the cherry trees that lay chopped down around them. Of the boy with fear in his eyes and blood dripping from between his hands. Of the boy with a gentle smile and kind heart and too much belief in others. 

El stays in their apartment after the second week of the dreams. Her and Lauri taking turns pulling him out of them when they become too much. Lauri whispers poetry to him in the middle of the night while El curls against his side in a bed that isn’t big enough for the three of them. 

They make do, even when Lauri’s dreams begin to get just as bad, even when El wakes up one morning with her hands clutching at Will as if he’d disappear if she let him walk through the door. 

El doesn’t renew her lease. Neither do the two of them, searching for a new apartment and a larger bed instead. An apartment closer to the library El works at and the university. 

It’s another month of dreams before anything changes. A new apartment, and a larger bed marking the beginning of the month. A boy and a dog marking the end of it. 

The collision is entirely accidental in the end. A boy he recognizes without a shadow of a doubt pulling him back to his feet while he scolds the dog that leaps at his side. Soft blue eyes meeting his while he struggled to remember what he should say, what he should do when recognition flitted across the boys eyes and he smiled. A soft broken thing. 

“Scho, I’ve missed you.” It’s a whisper on the wind, a voice he’s known for as long as he remembers. Tom Blake runs into him in the center of the university and all he can do is blink down into blue eyes while he racks his brain for words that should come easily. 

“Blake, Tom I-” A hand in his as the boy shakes his head with that same soft smile. Leads him from the walkway with a gentle tug the dog trailing calmly at his side. 

It’s three hours later that he drags him home. Leads him up the stairs into the apartment. Watches as he plays with the dog in the living room of their slightly larger apartment.

The dogs name is Myrtle, named after a memory from a life cut short. Tom smiles up at him as he tells him of dreams he’d never been able to shake, memories he’d always had but never lived. 

Tom Blake smiles at him from the couch of his apartment and he finds that he never wants the boy he’d lost to leave. 

When Lauri and El make it home that night Tom is teaching him how to cook. Joking about welcoming his girl home all the way up until the door opens and the two walk in. 

Tom doesn’t leave. Not after he’s been introduced and Lauri falls in love with Myrtle. Not even when it’s past midnight and El falls asleep on the couch. 

Not even a month later when he shows up with a smile and a bag of groceries. When he tells them his lease is up and El lays a hand on his shoulder while she tells him not to renew it. 

William Schofield dies with blood on his hands and all he’s never said on the tip of his tongue. 

William Schofield gets a second chance, dreams of a life he’s already lived and all that he lost. This time he doesn’t hold back. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Happy 1917 day, and thanks to the discord again for all of the encouragement! You're all amazing!


End file.
